Nikon D3 - the scramble for gold in Beijing

On the way back out of the cathedral we shot some of the fine interior space of the building. On the interior shot we have annotated guide lines to show the drawing of the lens at 14mm and having used the Virtual Horizon feature to align the camera. There is no distortion to speak of, and the alignment of the horizontal is within 0.4°.

Cherry Picking

Additional material was shot from a cherry picker, the only practical way to achieve some of the shots requested by The Architectural Review. Paul wanted to shoot over a derelict chapel, down a graveyard across over the Mersey towards Liverpool. He arrived with a 30-foot lift on tow and was airborne in under 30 minutes! We took the opportunity to run off the 14-24mmm optic against the older 17-35mm.

Basic testing

Simultaneously with all the antics described above we were able to get some basic testing done!

Colour Accuracy

Under a variety of daylight conditions (from cloudy to sunlight) we obtained errors across the Macbeth Chart of between 4 and 5 ΔE 2000, tuning the image for only white balance and exposure. This is reasonably typical of a good digital SLR. After profiling the target we obtained an average error of just 1.78 ΔE2000 across the Macbeth Chart, better than we have achieved before. The largest error in this test set was the primary red at 6.0 ΔE Lab/4.2 ΔE2000.

ABOVE: The drawing of the 14-24 f2.8 Nikkor is superb. This image was lined up using the Virtual Horizon utility built into the D3.

RIGHT: After profiling we obtained a really first-class colour audit, the best we have measured in fact. Only the primary red stood out as being a little further off target, particularly on its luminance component. Our efforts were slightly impeded by the inability of Photoshop CS2 to open the D3 RAW files, some of our utilities for calibration have yet to catch up with the new technology!

Focusing

Much is made of the new 51-point focus detection system. This number may be reduced to 21, the default 9, or down to a single point. For sports photography (and this includes brides running across lawns) the ability to track focus is important. To test this we borrowed a boisterous Labrador puppy and had it race about the garden, chasing a ball. Light levels were poor so we used 1600 ISO and 6400 ISO, shooting at 9fps. In all we shot off 228 frames with the puppy leaping in the air or running directly at the camera. We experienced about 39 'out of focus' frames or frames in which the system totally lost the focus during the sequence. In general the burst sequences showed that, once focus was lost, it was never recovered before the dog had arrived at the camera position. The system is certainly not foolproof but a far better performer than any human, you simply cannot manually follow-focus at 9fps.

Image Noise

One of the headline features of the D3 is low noise at higher ISO. This was certainly confirmed by our tests at 6400 ISO even though the image was obviously noisier than at lower speed ratings. In purely practical terms we obtained a very acceptable A4 print from a 6400 ISO image and even pushed it to A2. We were able to use in-camera noise reduction and a moderate (setting 3) amount of in-camera sharpening. We also applied High Pass sharpening before conversion to CMYK of the image shown, this did not produce any untoward artefacts in the main part of the image. The only real noise effect we could detect was a slight lack of subtlety in the dog’s cheek fur that was facing the sky - it had tended to shift a little too much towards blue. Overall though, the claims made by Nikon for the superior performance of the D3 at high ISO are well justified. This feature above all should endear the camera to the wedding photographer needing to shoot in church interiors. No colour film has even acheived this speed or quality.

ABOVE: Low noise at high ISO are a key feature of the D3.

A motor drive sequence shot at 9fps. The focus does not lock on until the 4th frame, holds for the next five frames and then loses focus on frames 9–12.

Reproduced at smaller scale than the original, the noise and sharpness may be judged from this image. Shot at 6400ISO, 1/1250s @ f2.8, 105mm VR Micro Nikkor.

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Photo Quote: Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me? - Ansel Adams